Monthly Archive: November 2010

The Victorian Liberals’ victory came as unsurprising to me, and not just for the reasons outlined by the ever-perceptive Peter Brent. There has been voter crankiness against state and federal Labor governments that reflects the exhaustion of the party’s attempt to use technocratic managerialism as a substitute for traditional social democratic politics. As Left Flank has pointed out, this […]

It was difficult to know how to approach Paul Howes’ Confessions Of A Faceless Man, his public “diary” of the 2010 election campaign. Was it to be a tell-all insider’s account delivering anecdotes that journalistic efforts would miss? Was it to be a re-evaluation of the problems the first-term federal government got itself into, a thoughtful […]

Me in today’s The Drum Unleashed on the ABC website, where I look at the collapse of the Greens’ strategy to secure Liberal Party preferences in some key inner-Melbourne seats. Just why is a Left party playing these games? Since 2006 the ALP has hammered the fact the Greens are willing to do deals with the Liberals, a line […]

Me in today’s Overland Journal blog, on the crisis in psychiatry: Biological psychiatry is currently facing pervasive challenges to its hegemony. Mental illness has gained massive recognition and medical treatments for such disorders are virtually ubiquitous. At the same time, the field is beset by scandals around kickbacks from drug companies, embroiled in divisive arguments over its […]

As I wrote previously, Stephen Fry was under fire earlier this week for making comments regarding women’s sexuality. Subjected to condemnation, he left Twitter and nothing further was heard from him. Since then he has published a piece on his website, explaining himself: I suppose the keenest disappointment I feel about the past week and the almost […]

So what is politics? For most, politics is that thing that happens in Canberra and on Macquarie Street. That thing to be ridiculed, not trusted, obsessed over and argued about. It is that thing external from us, happening ‘out there’ in other locations, and reported in the media. Yet politics is also a practice, or potential […]

Stephen Fry has quit Twitter. Some are saying that his tweet, “So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I’m the Antichrist. I give up.” and his subsequent, “Bye bye” is a “hissy fit”. Maybe. We’re all entitled to bad behaviour. I also wonder if it is a reaction […]

In my review of John Quiggin’s Zombie Economics I started to develop a theme about the nature of neoliberalism that goes beyond his focus on a set of flawed economic ideas and their application: So why do market liberal ideas persist despite being disproved in practice? Quiggin suggests a mixture of the influence of vested interests and […]